Hi
One thing we seem to over look so often here in the collectors world is that Playmobil needs to have fast sales on a very broad market. In this day and age of short attention spans kids loose interest in themes and Playmobil is trying to keep up. Companies like Lego have faster turnaround and seem to be able to dominate the market. Playmobil is really in a difficult situation with market research, design, mold creation, etc... taking sometimes years to get a particular Theme to market. By this time the market has changed only complicating the process.
Rasputin "The Mad Monk"